January 24, The church as it survives today is a intricate set of building phases and burial activity. However, the core upstanding structure is Romanesque 12th century and the burials stretch back to the Gallo-Roman period 4th century.
So far, so good! But what really sets Saint-Laurent apart from β¦ well, pretty much anything else β¦ is that fact that it has a surviving Merovingian crypt from the 6th century. Coming from Irish archaeology, where even ruins of anything before the 10th century are relatively rare, a complete 6th century crypt never ceases to amaze me!
Exterior of the crypt. The site has been investigated in one form or another since the early 19th century, and the crypt was rediscovered in This protection was extended to the whole site in and a spectacular series of excavations began in , followed by its opening to the public as a museum in When I first visited, in , parts of the excavated cemetery withing the former cloister were roofed with corrugated plastic sheeting on a framework of scaffolding poles.
It gave the area a feeling that the archaeologists had just left for their tea break and, if you could just find it, they were sitting chatting happily. The museum closed in for extensive renovations, only reopening in There are new displays; an excellent history of the site projected on one wall of the church; and a new glass roof over the excavated portion of the cemetery.
Graveyard as photographed in The overviews of church interior show how the later floor levels have been excavated away, exposing the domed top of the 6th century crypt. Some of the sarcophagi here date to the 5th and 6th centuries. At the eastern end, the 18th century altar by Francesco Tanzi remains in place. Excavations across the complex have uncovered some human burials, ranging in date from the 4th to the 18th centuries. One particularly densely used and reused area was the site of the former cloister.
